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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trouble is, tone doesn't come through text very well. Takes a lot more typing and very careful word choice. So haste often comes off as unkind. Maybe we can read comments more kindly, and give terse words the benefit of the doubt?
This is exactly why smileys were born. But some people tend to be elitist and frown upon them. :)
:-)
I'm definitely more patient than I was a decade ago, but I still have little use for useless people. I don't feel like I have to be kind to those who aren't motivated to contribute and do thoughtful work.
You don't have to be kind; you don't have to be anything. On the other hand, if you want to be a good engineer, with goodness defined as how much one contributes to the team/company, then you probably should be kind. If you feel like your teammate is unmotivated then it seems like if you want to be a good engineer you would do your best to motivate that person.
Having an uncaring attitude towards your coworkers could well lower their motivation which would mean your net contribution to the team is lessened as well.
Several well-known people in tech are notorious jerks. So I don't think being kind is a necessary condition for career success (though it can't hurt). But I suspect it's necessary to have a happy life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trouble is, tone doesn't come through text very well. Takes a lot more typing and very careful word choice. So haste often comes off as unkind. Maybe we can read comments more kindly, and give terse words the benefit of the doubt?
This is exactly why smileys were born. But some people tend to be elitist and frown upon them. :)
That may be due to the fact that the little smile at the end of a sentence can look really self-satisfied or fake.
Especially if you were to dismiss any complainers by calling them elitists, and afterward tack a smile on the end of the sentence. Here, I'm being nice too! :) :) :)
Author's 'before' picture is me very often. I'm nearly ego-less in pursuit of the truth--more than ready to be shown wrong myself--but that doesn't mean that coworkers and loved ones end up feeling good about the conversation. I hope he will write a "how to" follow up, because I would like to change, but I don't see how to do it in a way that doesn't sound impossibly exhausting. I'm hopeful that it actually is possib…
I'd also put in a recommendation for a book I stumbled upon when searching through Hacker News called "Difficult Conversations."
http://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What-M...
I got the same feeling from reading the book as the original recommender ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7762266 ): reading the book made me feel instantly better at being able to communicate when having difficult or tense conversations. I can't recommend it enough.
I really like these two paragraphs towards the end: Being kind isn’t the same as being nice. It isn’t about superficial praise. It doesn’t mean dulling your opinions. And it shouldn’t diminish the passion with which you present them. Being kind is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your impact on the people around you. It requires you be mindful of their feelings and considerate of the way your presence af…
To be fair, this is also incredibly exhausting. Most peoples' reactions to things are arbitrary at best and constant worrying about how they will take something is just way too much BS to put into my day. I bought pretty deeply into this philosophy once and it just made me neurotic and quiet at a time of my life where those things very much hurt me. I think being selectively kind makes a lot more sense. I'm kind to c…
A soccer mom is a very valuable person who also does work, work that kids appreciate a lot, don't be so belittling. If you are jealous of her, try to find a partner with a good career that allows you to be a soccer dad.
I really like these two paragraphs towards the end: Being kind isn’t the same as being nice. It isn’t about superficial praise. It doesn’t mean dulling your opinions. And it shouldn’t diminish the passion with which you present them. Being kind is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your impact on the people around you. It requires you be mindful of their feelings and considerate of the way your presence af…
Totally agree, especially in regard to when people share their projects on HN. The HN community moderation always seemed to be based on a very superficial rules - don't swear, don't mention banned keywords X Y or Z. Never have they seemed to seriously consider the impact that words have on other people, instead of just the words themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trouble is, tone doesn't come through text very well. Takes a lot more typing and very careful word choice. So haste often comes off as unkind. Maybe we can read comments more kindly, and give terse words the benefit of the doubt?
"Text does not communicate tone" is a huge problem. You can solve that by deciding that certain types of communication should be done face to face. Being kind can be more concise. Here is an example that my fiance recently pointed out... I think the single biggest mistake people make in communication is reminding the other person they are incorrect when that does not change the content. "As I told you Monday, the rea…
The pattern in the examples you mentioned is the desire, conscious or not, to twist the knife a little and squeeze out a "sorry" from the other person. The desire for someone else to realize an error they've made turns into a desire for guilt, a general "think better next time" that is just specific enough to hurt but vague enough to not actually be helpful. It's like training an animal with a blunt instrument and expecting that to get results anytime fast.
I really like these two paragraphs towards the end: Being kind isn’t the same as being nice. It isn’t about superficial praise. It doesn’t mean dulling your opinions. And it shouldn’t diminish the passion with which you present them. Being kind is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your impact on the people around you. It requires you be mindful of their feelings and considerate of the way your presence af…
To be fair, this is also incredibly exhausting. Most peoples' reactions to things are arbitrary at best and constant worrying about how they will take something is just way too much BS to put into my day. I bought pretty deeply into this philosophy once and it just made me neurotic and quiet at a time of my life where those things very much hurt me. I think being selectively kind makes a lot more sense. I'm kind to c…
"Reaction I do not understand" is not the same thing as "reaction that is arbitrary."
Frequently a decision that appears to make no sense starts to do so when you put yourself in the shoes of the person who made it. Their experiences in life have been different than yours (guaranteed!), so there will be no shortage of cases where you look at something and think "A" while that other person looks at the same thing and thinks "B." But that doesn't make either of you arbitrary; you both have reasons for your interpretation, they're just different.
> People at work, retail staff, etc should be prepared to not have their emotions constantly validated and deal with disagreement and other things that are unpleasant
But that was the whole point of the article: it's possible to disagree with others in a way that is still respectful. Keeping that bit of respect in what you say is really all it takes. You don't have to agree with everything they say or spend all day pumping sunshine up their skirts; you just have to have enough respect for them to hold back from turning objection into insult. It's stopping at "I disagree with you" and not taking the extra step to "and therefore you are a bad person."
> Its easy for celebrity millionaire Kurt Vonnegut to write about compassion and be quoted by tumblerinas
Let's say I read your comment and, instead of taking the time to try and address your points directly and individually, I just fired back something along the lines of "you're quite a sperglord."
Would you be comfortable with that response? Would it feel pleasant, or even neutral? Or would it feel like a personal attack -- something that would make you feel an impulse to lash out back at me?
It would feel like an attack, of course. Why? Because I'm not dealing with you as an individual. I'm just picking you up and stuffing you into a bucket with a label on it. It would be dismissive, and people don't like being dismissed.
Now ask yourself: having said all that, can you imagine someone else feeling the same way -- and reacting the same way, as if you had attacked them -- when you dismiss them as a "tumblerina"?